On a gray March afternoon at the Port of Los Angeles, the largest in the U.S., powerful electric top-handlers whir, beep and grind as they motor back and forth, grabbing trailers from truck beds and stacking them as they move on or off the mighty container ships that ferry goods across the Pacific. Some of the ships, rather than burning diesel to sustain operations as they sit in harbor, plug into electricity instead.
The shift to electricity is part of efforts to clean up the air around America’s ports, which have long struggled with pollution that chokes nearby neighborhoods and jeopardizes the health of people living there. The landmark climate law championed by former President Joe Biden earmarked $3 billion to boost those efforts.
Some of the people who live near U.S. hubs now worry that President Donald Trump’s administration could seek to cancel or claw back some of that money.
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“Our area is disproportionately affected by pollution directly related to the ports activity,” said Theral Golden, who’s lived in the West Long Beach area for more than 50 years. He pointed to the rivers of trucks moving back and forth on nearby highways and overpasses. “It’s all part of the same goods movement effort, and it has to be cleaned up.”
The Biden money aims to slash 3 million metric tons of carbon pollution across 55 ports in more than two dozen states, through cleaner equipment and vehicles, plus infrastructure and community engagement resources.
Some ports say they have already spent hundreds of millions to replace older, dirtier equipment. Members of the American Association of Port Authorities, representing more than 130 public port authorities in the U.S. and beyond, are planning at least $50 billion more of decarbonization projects. Many are easy: for example, drayage trucks — which drive short distances between ports and nearby warehouses — are good candidates for electrification since they don’t have to go far between charges.
The Biden money wasn’t enough to completely solve the problem — project requests alone topped $8 billion, per the Environmental Protection Agency — but it was a substantial investment that many experts, including Sue Gander, a director at the research nonprofit World Resources Institute, said would “have a real impact.” They also said it was the biggest outlay of federal funding they’d seen toward the problem.
But Trump, from his first day back in the White House, has attacked much of his predecessor’s climate policies in the name of “energy dominance”. He’s sought to roll back clean energy, air, water and environmental justice policies and frozen federal funding, disrupting community organizations and groups planning on the funds for everything from new solar projects to electric school buses to other programs.
EPA spokesperson Shayla Powell said the agency has worked to enable payment accounts for infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act grant recipients, “so funding is now accessible.”
While one port said the program was set to be active, others were waiting for the federal grant funding review process to be completed or were monitoring the situation.
Source: Associated Press